Social Question

Will they ever stop lying to us?

First, an excerpt from a revealing article about Roger Ailes, president of FOX News, published yesterday.

In the fable Ailes tells about his own life, he made a clean break with his dirty political past long before 1996, when he joined forces with Murdoch to launch Fox News. “I quit politics,” he has claimed, “because I hated it.” But an examination of his career reveals that Ailes has used Fox News to pioneer a new form of political campaign – one that enables the Republican party to bypass sceptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion. The network, at its core, is a giant soundstage created to mimic the look and feel of a news operation, cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism.

According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Sharia law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama’s citizenship. At the height of the healthcare debate, more than two-thirds of Fox News viewers were convinced Obamacare would lead to a “government takeover”, provide healthcare to illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and let the government decide when to pull the plug on grandma. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland revealed that ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That’s because Ailes isn’t interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimisation.

The Murdoch scandal, which seems to have been mostly swept under the rug, should have sparked a public outcry. After knowing this happened, shouldn’t we be scrutinizing all media conglomerates, especially those affiliated with Rupert Murdoch? The actions of Ailes, and those like him, are an insult to the American public.

There are manyexamples of how powerful companies influence and control information/ political decisions. This is why I feel compelled to give every piece of information my full analysis – and I urge everyone else to do the same. We all know that Ailes isn’t the only mogul wielding this type of chutzpah.

Politicans and their water carriers like Alies and Murdoch will quit lying to us when enough of us get sensible and envolved enough to recognize the blatant absurdity of what they spew out to us. As long as the sheeple keep allowing the Plutocrats to harvest their life savings and hopes for a future in order to line their own pockets, no, they won’t wuit lying. Why would thay. It’s making them filthy rich.

@atlantis All media has a slant. But not all media is a propaganda unit for a political party. That’s blatant moral reltivism to make such a claim. Are the North Korean news agency and the Times of London exactly equal in propaganda and bias? Definitely not! Scientific American isn’t exactly lkike the National Enquirer. That’s a common lie rolled out by the right to defend the lies that Fox propaganda promotes as real news. If you are preaching it, shame on you. If you;ve fallen into believing it because it is so often repeated, think it through. It isn’t true.

@ETpro I should have made my answer clearer. I meant, most news originates from a few media conglomerates. My finger was pointing at the business aspect of news making and how it’s the defining propellant for its dispensation. The “selling” is what is central and this ties in with advertising and the cycle goes on.

And by news here I mean world news, not Psychology today, or the National Geographic Traveler.

I was only using FOX news as an example. Bad choice seeing it’s used so rampantly

I was most certainly not implying what you are in your answer. Rest assured.

@atlantis I completely agree with you on that. We once had a strong and independent media with a major paper in every large community, each owned by a local family who cared intensely about the place where they lived. Now, a handful mf mega corporations own virtually all media outlets and we get all the news the corporatists want us to believe.

Fox is just unique in that they specifically order their reporters to use talking points sent directly to them from the RNC. For instance, they were never to say the words Healthcare Reform or call the bill by its actual name, The Affordable Healthcare Act. Instead, it always had to be referred to as Obamacare or “A massive government takeover of healthcare.” Fox is the only news organization I am aware of to ever go to court to defend their right to lie. THey defended the firing of a reporter who refused to pass on a story handed to him because his own investigation revealed it was not true. He went to management to show them that it wasn’t true, and was ordered to run with it anyway. He refused, and was fired. Fox actually won the Constitutional right to deliberately lie on the air.